CVE-2023-52138
Path traversal via crafted cpio archives in Engrampa archivers
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- GitHub_M
Description
Engrampa is an archive manager for the MATE environment. Engrampa is found to be vulnerable to a Path Traversal vulnerability that can be leveraged to achieve full Remote Command Execution (RCE) on the target. While handling CPIO archives, the Engrampa Archive manager follows symlink, cpio by default will follow stored symlinks while extracting and the Archiver will not check the symlink location, which leads to arbitrary file writes to unintended locations. When the victim extracts the archive, the attacker can craft a malicious cpio or ISO archive to achieve RCE on the target system. This vulnerability was fixed in commit 63d5dfa.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 39 days later
· 39 days later
Published
- 17 months later
· 17 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High8.2 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:H/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | Critical9.6 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.7% · top 23% of all CVEs (7 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.2.
Weakness
Affected products
- affected < commit 63d5dfa
References (4)
- https://github.com/mate-desktop/engrampa/security/advisories/GHSA-c98h-v39w-3r7v (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- https://github.com/mate-desktop/engrampa/commit/63d5dfa9005c6b16d0f0ccd888cc859fca78f970 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/4IOJ3QWXTZGCXFEHP72ELY22PZ4AX2CB/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/02/msg00011.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2023-52138)Record last updated .